by Erik Hamre
“That means someone inside the government. Only a very select group of people were aware that we had Kevorkian in our custody.”
“They may not have planned for him to have the stroke on the plane.”
“You think someone planned for him to have a stroke if he was ever pushed too hard, if he was waterboarded?” Kraut asked.
Vladimir shrugged his shoulders. “It’s plausible, just as plausible as Kevorkian amending the file.”
“Hmmf. The thought has occurred to me too. The scale of this is just too big for any one man to be behind it. He must have had help from people in high places.”
“Can you look into it?”
“As we speak I have a team tracking down every person who has ever spoken to Kevorkian. All that money he stole has to have ended up somewhere. Once we find out where, we will be one step closer to understanding what he has done.”
Vladimir cradled his head in his palms. He had a throbbing headache too. He had just been informed that his best friend, his long-time boss and benefactor, had suffered a stroke on the way to Guantanamo Bay. Quite possibly he had actually had the stroke before Vladimir interviewed him. He had been sitting there right in front of Vladimir, and hadn’t revealed a thing. Why had he never told Vladimir about the headaches? And who was Andrew Kevorkian really? At that point in time Vladimir knew he had to question every single word Kevorkian had ever uttered. It was impossible to know when Kevorkian’s deception had started.
Vladimir sat back down in the chair. Was it the fear of what was going to happen to him at Guantanamo Bay that had triggered the stroke? Vladimir knew he would probably never get to know the answer to that question.
Kevorkian had done something unthinkable.
He had deceived everyone who had ever put trust in him. And for what? That was the question. Why had he done it?
Vladimir was almost surprised he didn’t feel more empathy for Kevorkian lying alone in a hospital bed somewhere. Incapacitated - a vegetable who would never again be the same. What he instead felt was anger, pure anger.
Anger for Kevorkian’s incredible selfishness.
And for the first time that day Vladimir felt scared, truly scared.
If Ronald Kraut was correct, if Kevorkian, or someone else, had amended Kevorkian’s medical records, then Kraut and the government were in deep trouble. Vladimir had hoped that Kevorkian would eventually come to his senses. That the gravity of what he had done would sink in once he put on an orange jumpsuit and joined the enemies of the United States at Guantanamo Bay. Kevorkian wasn’t a terrorist. He had always been a patriot. America had been good to him. The world had been good to him.
So why on Earth would he want to destroy the world?
It just didn’t make any sense.
“How are you doing by the way? Are you making any progress?” Ronald Kraut asked.
Vladimir shook his head. “I don’t think we will find the answer here,” he replied. “That would be too easy.”
“So what’s your suggestion? Remember, right now you’ve got the resources of the entire US Army at your disposal. If you want something I can probably get it.”
“I need you to get me Sarah Kevorkian. I need you to get her here immediately. And I need a whiteboard.”
10
1st of June 2015
DARPA’s remote Listening Station No 3
The Nevada Desert
DAY 1:
1200 Hours
Vladimir was standing in front of the large whiteboard. It was as empty as the one in his office had been earlier that day. He had to clear his mind, start from scratch. Whatever Vladimir found logical might not be logical to Kevorkian.
“What’s the goal of the AI? That’s the question. If we find out what it wants to achieve, then we will at least have a chance of understanding it,” Ronald Kraut said.
Vladimir nodded, writing the question on the whiteboard. “I agree. Kevorkian told me that it would shut down by itself once it had achieved its goal. The problem is that there is no guarantee that will ever happen. If the AI turns self-aware, then there is a risk it will want to self-preserve; it won’t just commit suicide because its creator told it to do so.”
“Its creator almost committed suicide.”
“We don’t know that yet. But that’s my biggest worry. If Kevorkian thought this experiment, or whatever it is, was more important than his own life, then there is a risk he could have harboured the same disregard for other people’s lives.”
“You mean like a doomsday scenario?”
“Yes. Once the Artificial General Intelligence is strong enough, once it has infiltrated every single electronic device connected to the internet, then it could very well decide to do what your team of experts probably fear. It could come up with biological weapons capable of targeting humans. It could access power grids and traffic lights causing deadly accidents around the world. If it wanted to it could quite easily wipe out most of the human race in a day, and it would probably thrive and prosper doing it.”
“So you believe its long term goal would be to maximise infiltration, and then start attacking humans?”
Vladimir stopped. He remained staring at the whiteboard for a few seconds. He had only written one single sentence: What is the AI’s goal????
“Damn it,” he said.
“What is it?”
“He tricked me. Kevorkian tricked me.”
“How?”
“There is no goal. Kevorkian only told me that to throw me off on the wrong trail.”
“What do you mean?”
“Don’t you see? We have assumed Kevorkian designed a goal-oriented system. Because that’s how computer systems are normally designed. But Kevorkian always claimed goals were for losers. He said, ‘winners run their lives by systems, by identifying patterns – just like the brain does.’ Kevorkian hasn’t designed a traditional goal-oriented system. He’s designed a pattern-oriented system. It’s looking for patterns.”
Vladimir’s line of reasoning was interrupted by the door bursting open. “Sir, you need to come. It’s on again,” the soldier in the doorway said.
Both Kraut and Vladimir bolted out the door. When they arrived in the operation room Vladimir realised the scope of the attacks. The many computer screens in the room were lit up like miniature Christmas trees. Green dots kept pulsating on various maps covering the United States and most of the western world.
“What do the green dots represent?” Vladimir asked.
“They represent breaches.”
“And why are they pulsing?”
“We don’t know yet. It was the same with the first two attacks. The systems are being breached over and over. It comes in waves.”
“So it uses a new method to breach the system every time?”
“That’s correct.”
“It’s learning. It’s learning how to breach the systems in order to improve, in order to get better, in order to get smarter.”
“What does that mean?” the soldier asked.
“Which systems haven’t been breached yet?” Vladimir asked.
“Exactly,” Kraut responded.
11
1st of June 2015
DARPA’s remote Listening Station No 3
The Nevada Desert
DAY 1:
1300 Hours
Andrew Kevorkian had never been your normal run of the mill Silicon Valley entrepreneur. It was often said about successful people that they could have been successful in whatever ventures they decided to immerse themselves in. But that statement was simply untrue. Succeeding in Silicon Valley didn’t just require smarts. It wasn’t enough to come up with a brilliant idea or be excellent at execution. It was the timing that was the most crucial element. There were numerous examples of brilliant people coming up with revolutionary ideas and companies, only to see their creations fold before they got a chance to prove themselves. Kevorkian was fond of saying that he tried to anticipate where technology would be in fifteen years, and t
hen he would start working on ideas that would fit into that future technology-regime. There was no point developing something that was too futuristic, or too backwards.
It had to be realistic.
He had started to work on Neuralgo only a short year after his son, Kevin, had disappeared. Kevorkian’s marriage had fallen apart and he needed something with which to distract his mind. He was wealthy, very wealthy, so in the beginning he didn’t need to bring in outside investors. He funded the first five years of research out of his own pocket. If it hadn’t been for the global financial crisis in 2008 he might never have taken in external investors. But in the end he had to. His reluctance to spread his risk, to diversify his investments, got the better of him. TrakTek, the company he had founded in 1995, eventually ran into cash flow problems and the stock price plummeted. Suddenly Kevorkian couldn’t just sell off shares to fund his new venture. He needed to raise outside money. Lots of it. That was never any real problem though. Investors had been drooling over the prospect of investing in Kevorkian’s latest adventure since he started it. Little was publically known about what Neuralgo really did though. For a long time it had been enjoying the fruits of being a private company, wholly controlled by one single shareholder. Accountable to no one. A company in true stealth mode.
Once it raised hundreds of millions from some of the most prestigious VC companies in the Valley, the cat was out of the bag though. Neuralgo was attempting to cure death. It was attempting to come up with a solution to stop aging. There were other players on the field as well. Google’s Sergey Brin and Larry Page had backed Calico, a company that attempted to do something similar, to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars. Famous PayPal co-founder and early Facebook backer, Peter Thiel, was backing another competitor. But none of those companies had been in the game as long as Neuralgo. Neuralgo had years on them. To further complicate the situation, the companies all had very different approaches. This was probably the reason Kevorkian had decided to keep Neuralgo away from the Valley in the first place. Clever engineers in the Valley were constantly harassed by recruiters and new start-ups offering them ridiculous pay packets and transfer fees if they were willing to jump ship and change jobs. It was different in Las Vegas. Kevorkian’s senior engineers weren’t distracted by this continuous poaching, and they seldom spoke to anyone outside Neuralgo about what they were doing during business hours. If you thought Apple was secretive, you hadn’t been to Neuralgo. It was Fort Knox and the CIA, sprinkled with a dash of North Korea. And it worked amazingly well. Neuralgo had hardly experienced any leaks in the decade or so they had been developing their technology.
And that was part of the problem. Not many people actually knew how far Neuralgo had come in their research when the story broke, what breakthroughs they had made.
If people had known, they might have been worried sooner.
Ronald Kraut and Vladimir sat down in the meeting room. Kraut was as pale as a ghost.
“There is something I need to tell you, Vladimir,” he said. “Something important.”
Vladimir nodded. “What is it?” He couldn’t really envision the situation getting much worse.
“Protocol Cronus, there is more in the protocol than what you’ve read.”
“What do you mean more? Has something been omitted from the copy I got?”
Ronald sighed. “You got an early version.”
Vladimir looked confusedly at Kraut. “So? Can I get the new version?”
Kraut shook his head. “Not yet.”
“What’s different?”
Kraut sighed. “There have been some updates.”
“What? What’s changed?” Vladimir asked.
“Let’s just say that I hope the artificial intelligence stays away from our nuclear control systems,” Kraut said cryptically.
Vladimir raised his left eyebrow. Kraut seemed to want to get something off his chest. That much was clear. “What will happen if it attempts to hack the nuclear control systems? Has it got something to do with Directive EED-32? There was nothing about it in the protocol.”
Ronald dragged his palms across his face. He blinked twice. His eyes red as dawn. “Nothing good. Nothing good will happen.”
“Nothing good? You have to tell me more than that, Kraut.”
“I will. Just not right now. The important thing now is to figure out a way to stop this thing.” Kraut had changed his mind. He decided he needed to wait to share the information.
“If you want me to help stop it, you need to tell me everything.”
Kraut took a deep breath, before clutching his chest.
“Are you OK?” Vladimir asked.
Kraut nodded. “Just a bit of indigestion. And, trust me, Vladimir. I will tell you everything. Just be patient.”
12
1st of June 2015
DARPA’s remote Listening Station No 3
The Nevada Desert
DAY 1:
1500 Hours
The mood in the room was solemn when Sarah Kevorkian entered through the reinforced steel door. She was one of those women who could light up an entire room. If Andrew Kevorkian had possessed a magnetic personality, Sarah would be the other pole of that magnet. She had always been deeply attracted to Kevorkian, but she had also despised most of the people he had surrounded himself with. And she had always done her best to push them away. Vladimir had been one of the few exceptions.
“Hi, Sarah,” Vladimir greeted Kevorkian’s ex-wife.
She just nodded coldly, barely acknowledging his presence. The time they had greeted each other with a warm hug and a kiss on the cheek was long gone. That’s what usually happened following divorces though: People picked sides, and there would always be this unspoken suspicion from each of the former spouses on which story their respective friends had been told. Sarah, for example, was fairly certain Vladimir had only been told Kevorkian’s side of the breakup. How Sarah had insisted on moving on with her life, how she had almost demanded a new child. But Vladimir had never actually heard that story. Not from Kevorkian. Kevorkian had never spoken ill about his ex-wife. Not once. ”She wants to handle it differently than I,” he had said. ”She wants to move on. But I can’t.” There had been no anger in Kevorkian’s voice. He was a logical person, and he understood that living together wouldn’t work when they had such different views on how to handle the grief. So Kevorkian had taken the only logical next step; he had applied for a divorce, citing ‘irreconcilable differences.’ Vladimir was certain Kevorkian had never stopped loving Sarah though. And that was the reason he needed to speak to her. Vladimir couldn’t possibly envision Kevorkian unleashing some sort of doomsday weapon upon the world if it meant risking Sarah getting hurt.
He would never have wanted to hurt Sarah.
“Are you sick, Sarah?” Vladimir asked.
“Excuse me,” Sarah Kevorkian replied. “What sort of question is that?”
“I’m sorry. I’ll explain later. But right now I need to know if you’re sick, Sarah. If you have any sort of terminal illness, and if so, if Andrew knew about it.”
“I don’t have any terminal illness, thank you very much. What the hell is going on, Vladimir? I’ve been dragged out here. No explanations. And you ask me if I have a terminal illness? What is going on? Is this about Andrew? Of course it is. What has he done now?”
“Andrew has had a stroke, Sarah. I’m sorry.”
Sarah suddenly felt lightheaded. A slight tingle ran down her arms before ending up in her fingertips. “Is he OK?” she asked, the combination of the shocking message and skipping breakfast threatening to make her pass out.
Vladimir shook his head. “It’s not good. He is on life support. He may not make it through the week.”
Sarah stumbled over to one of the plastic chairs in the room. Vladimir just managed to pull it out before she almost collapsed onto it.
“Where is he? I want to see him.”
“I don’t know where he is.”
“Is this a jo
ke?”
“Andrew is in a secret hospital run by the military. He’s getting the best treatment possible. But his exact location is classified. I don’t know where he is either.”
“What is this? What’s going on, Vladimir? You’re telling me Andrew may die, and still I’m not allowed to see him?”
Vladimir put a hand on her shoulder. “I’m sorry, Sarah.”
Sarah wiped a tear away from her cheek. “I have never even considered the thought that Andrew could ever die you know. When he told me he was going to cure death I actually believed him. I thought he was going to do it. I thought he was going to cure death.”
Vladimir smiled. “So did I, Sarah, so did I.”
Sarah looked up at Vladimir. “So why am I here if I can’t see him? And why did you ask me if I was sick?”
Vladimir sighed before sitting down in the chair next to Sarah. “Andrew might actually have succeeded. He might actually have cured death.”
It took a few minutes before the gravity of the situation hit Sarah. But when it did - it hit hard. Her ex-husband had created an artificial intelligence, a copy of his own brain, and unleashed it into the physical world. This creation had breached and infiltrated multiple computer systems across the world. No one really knew the real extent of the threat yet, because they had only been able to observe the artificial intelligence when it breached the various computer systems. They hadn’t been able to observe what it really was or how it worked. The fact of the matter was that even though the US Defense Forces had put their best people on the case, they were only allowed to see what the artificial intelligence allowed them to see. To witness the incredible speed it possessed when it launched its attacks, to witness its brilliance when it hacked through the most advanced firewalls and security systems in the world like it was child’s play.